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Thursday, September 11, 2008

I was a Junior in college. I lived in a dorm. I'd rolled out of bed for a 9:00 class I didn't want to go to and had just gotten out of the shower. I was walking down the hall to my room. My next door neighbor Peggy eerily said, "Megan, if you have a TV, you'd better turn it on."

I didn't have one, so I turned and walked into her room, instead of mine. There it was, and Peggy muttered something about the Pentagon too, and all we could do was stare. For an eternity, we didn't move or talk, we just stared.

After about an hour, I realized, there I was, standing there still in my towel. I rushed to get dressed, not knowing what to do. We still didn't know if this was it, or if more was coming. And then the first one fell. And I just kept thinking, "Jesus, let the ones that don't know you fall on their knees now, while they still can." And then the second one fell.

Almost no one went to class that day. TVs were everywhere, and we all just stared.

12 comments:

I think most of us walked around that day in a daze. It is insane that, really all anyone talked about that day was the events that unfolded before us.I too was a junior in college, living at home. What an insane day.

It was my last semester in college. My roomate came bursting into my room and I shot right up in bed. The tv was on and we just sat there. All day. We lived 30 mins from the pentagon so it was a ghost town. At one point we had to venture out for something and the electronic traffic signs on I-95 all said "Terrorist activity avoid all roads to DC" bizarre. and tragic.

Hard to believe it's been 7 years. Seems like just yesterday. I, too, was in college, at the U, and remember being glued to the TV, frozen in time. I remember sitting with Jake in the following days, just wanting to feel safe and loved. We'll remember this day for the rest of our lives...

I will NEVER forget that day or what I was doing. My mom called me and I was still in bed. She told me to turn the t.v on and I saw the second plane hit and the first tower fall. I remember thinking what the heck happened. Nobody knew at that point it was a terrorist attack.

I had just started my senior year of high school. Seventy of us had been at school for early morning band before anything happened. We all walked into our first classes without any clue that anything had happened. During our break in choir, I stopped by the band director's office and found him hunched over his radio. We were slated to go to New York on a band trip in six months.

By my second block, both towers had fallen. The rest of the day is pretty hazy. School stayed open but people gradually left. The TVs in each classroom stayed on all day but it was eerily quiet throughout the whole building.

I was not able to sleep that morning - Alaska is four hours behind Eastern time - something felt off to me. Daniel and I were suppose to fly to Seattle the next day for a mini-vacation so I was preparing for that to keep busy.

Daniel called me from work, saying something weird was going on in New York, so I turned on the tv. I was paralyzed. None of it felt real - we were so far away from New York - it was hard to grasp the magnitude. Until the towers fell. Then it was so real and terrifying.

They shut down the base which meant Daniel couldn't come home; I was alone in our little apartment far, far away from home, newly married, alone with the world crashing down on itself.

I had sent my students out for morning recess and they quickly returned. My co-teacher came in and said we were on 'lock-down' and that the Palestinians were bombing New York. I was puzzled to say the least.

Another teacher came to my room and told me to turn the TV on. Yes, myself and my 4th graders watched the world change...

Wow. It's so sad. Reading all those comments about how everyone remembers it all and what they felt and still feel. I was just across the street in my dorm Megan and saw it on the lobby tv and stayed glued to it the rest of the day. Man.

Such a sad day for the U.S and the rest of the world. We were driving out of our home town to another town and we couldnt believe the news reports of the radio. There was continual TV coverage in Australia for the first 2 days. I sat glued, hardly able to comprehend the enormity of the situation. My most vivid memory is of all the city workers covered in the putrid ash and concrete dust and millions of papers flying through the air as the towers collapsed. The NYPD/NYFD became my heroes. It sends a chill down my spine.